Small-scale studies have shown that intensive hand washing promotion reduces disease, but there is little evidence that largescale hand washing promotion programs change behaviour. We deployed a community-based hand washing promotion intervention and used the presence of water and soap or soapy water at hand washing stations as a proxy indicator for hand washing behaviour and found encouraging results. A cluster randomized cholera vaccine trial conducted in a low-income urban area of Dhaka included those who received the vaccine only (Vaccine Only group), those who received the vaccine and a hand washing and water treatment intervention (Vaccine+HWT group), and those who were neither vaccinated nor received the intervention (Control group). Among the Vaccine+HWT group, the presence of water and soap or soapy water at the hand washing place increased from 22% (41/190) at baseline to 60% (102/171) at the 11-month assessment point (p<0.001). We found no significant increase in the presence of water and soap or soapy water among the Control group or the Vaccine Only group during the same period.

Our findings suggest that hand washing behaviour changed following implementation of a large-scale intervention in a low-income urban setting that provided hardware to enable hand washing and encouraged regular hand washing. Further research on health impact of hand washing with soap in this community and the sustainability of using soapy water could help optimize recommendations for improving hand washing practices in other low-income communities.

Hello, I received more details on this information request that I hope will be helpful. Please let me know if you have any relevant info: ----------------------------- Is there any academic research that has been conducted that looks at levels of fecal contamination of surrounding environment due to anal cleansing. Obviously if this is connected with open de […]

Hello. I've been working with Andrew Whitesell at Beaumont for the past few months and we would like to take this opportunity to provide an update on the FSOI project. Fecal Sludge Omni-Ingestor Project update Start & End Date: 2011 – TBD (to be determined; the contract has been extended to accommodate a changing or growing scope of work) Type of Fu […]

Dear all One of our cewas-ians needs your support to win a Swiss Sustainability Prize (Prix eco Swisscanto. She needs a few more likes in order to win the first prize of 15'000 CHF to support her work. See her request below (Deadline is tomorrow Wednesday 04.03.15 - so please be fast ): Please click on this Facebook link (http://goo.gl/Rrr1pi) and […]

Hi Nicola, I am a colleague of Moritz and one of my research fields is quantifying and characterising faecal slugde on a city-wide scale. The hyperlink to the FAQ project, Moritz refers to in his post leads you to a website with publications about the approach we have implemented in Kampala/Uganda and Hanoi/Vietnam. I could see the application of the latrine […]

Hi Elisabeth, No - I wasn't thinking about it for travelers (if you mean international travelers - although I suppose they might use it too), but anyone who is visiting a town and needs to find a loo. And as well as finding the facility in the first place, I was thinking more as a means to monitor the quality of service provided by the operators of publ […]

With the fact that nearly 35% of Delhi slum dwellers still practise open defecation, most of community and public toilets in the capital remains non-functional; the present scenario doesn’t seem to meet the goals of Delhi Master Plan for making the city Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2015. In this article, Ajay Sinha, Chief Operating Officer, Feedback Foundat […]

We have chosen the winners of our Picturing CLTS photo competition. Thank you to everyone who submitted photos. It was great to see such diverse depictions of CLTS in action and of many related aspects like handwashing, inclusive WASH and monitoring.